


I like shiny things but I'd marry you with paper rings

by ships_to_sail



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: 5 Times, Banter, Domestic Fluff, Hand Jobs, M/M, Rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:48:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22161334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: David is still looking at him with annoyed eyes, but Patrick just smiles even more fondly. He loves every version of David Rose, but slightly-annoyed-and-still-begrudgingly-affectionate is maybe his favorite version. He takes David’s left hand in his, slipping the first ring out of the little bundle in his fist and sliding it down around David’s index finger.ORFive times David's new jewelry comes into play
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 28
Kudos: 355





	I like shiny things but I'd marry you with paper rings

**Author's Note:**

> Happy season six day, y'all! The discord got all up in our feelings last night, and this fic is the result of all of that. A huge thank you to all of the lovely folks there who, whether they knew it or not, made this happen.
> 
> I have been able to post a fic/chapter/writing content every day for the last month, all in this fandom, all because you're all so lovely. So thank you for all of that. 
> 
> This hasn't been beta'd, so any and all mistakes are entirely my own, and the only "E" content is scene 3, all the rest of these are "T" rated! <3

1

“Are you having a stroke or something?” 

“What?”

“You’ve been doing that all day, cutting over in front of me. I’m going to trip on you.”

“I’m sorry, David, I didn’t realize our sidewalk arrangement was so perilous.”

“It wouldn’t be, if you just stayed on your side.”

“We don’t have sides!”

“Then why have you spent the last fifteen minutes and  _ three  _ of our stops cutting over to the left side?”

Patrick’s step falters slightly, but not so slightly that it escapes David’s notice. “You caught that, huh?”

“It wasn’t exactly subtle.” The tips of Patrick’s ears go pink and he shoves both his hands in his pockets. It makes Patrick look like a little boy, and David wants to rub his hands up and down Patrick’s arms until he unwinds and becomes Grown Up Patrick again. He wants to do it, so he does, and he can feel something in Patrick unwind the minute his broad palms come to rest on the top of Patrick’s shoulders. “You wanna talk about whatever it is?”

Patrick is staring very intently at David’s Adam’s apple, which might be directly in his line of sight but also has the added benefit of preventing him from having to make eye contact.

“It’s nothing,” Patrick mumbles, and David nods and just keeps waiting, letting the silence draw out between them until Patrick feels safe enough to speak. “I just. I wanna hold your hand.”

“What?” David isn’t laughing, he isn’t, he’s just caught off guard because Patrick looks so, so nervous, like he wants to swallow back what he said and curl up into a ball and they’re going to be getting married but Patrick feels nervous to ask to hold his hand. “Why would you not just tell me that?”

Patrick shrugs, a little bit of frustration seeping into the set of his jaw. “I don’t know. We’re engaged to be married, not fresh off the sock hop?”

“Okay, well we’ll circle back to the sock hop thing — you don’t have to ask to hold my hand.”

“Yeah, I kind of do.” It’s David’s turn to look confused. “I’m right handed, David. And I never noticed before but, every time we’re out…” he trails off, frustrated. “I’m just not used to it, okay! And every time I tried to get ahold of your left hand…” 

Patrick trails off and David realizes that his fiance has been dancing around him on the sidewalk all day so that he can hold his hand. Which is ridiculous, and wonderful, and exactly the kind of thing that Patrick Brewer would get embarrassed about. Which means it’s the perfect thing for David Rose to never let live down. 

“Well then here.” He wraps his left hand around Patricks, pressing their palms together and interlacing their fingers until the firm, gold metal of David’s new rings presses into the warm flesh of Patrick’s and the line between warm skin and cold metal disappears. “You don’t have to ask to hold my hand. We’ll just think of a code word. And then when you want to hold my hand, you can just say the code word.”

“David,” Patrick’s voice has a note of warning in it, and it makes David break out in goosebumps. 

“No, it needs to be something you never say.”

Patrick drags his feet for a few steps, making David tug his hand gently, their fingers still nestled together. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I don’t think you understand how code words work.”

“Shut up,” he says it and he’s laughing, pulling back on David until they’re meeting in the middle, crashing into each other’s shoulders, Patrick rocking up on his toes and pressing a kiss to the side of David’s neck, just above his pulse point. It’s his favorite place to kiss on a body he wants to spend the rest of his life kissing. 

David hums a little and Patrick can feel it in his lips, the soft buzz of David’s assent. “That’s much better.”

Patrick laughs and David laughs and their palms stay pressed together the rest of the walk home.

2

They’re laying in bed and it’s after midnight. They’re laying in bed and it’s after midnight and they should really, really be headed to sleep. They’ve got an early open at the store tomorrow, an entire busload of folks doing a craft crawl, stopping at a handful of bespoke local stores all across the area. They’ve been trying to get Rose Apothecary on the list for months, and if tomorrow goes well, they’re looking at being made a permanent stop. So, really, they should be asleep already. Should have been several hours ago.

But they’re not. They almost are, just on the edge of it. Patrick is curled into David’s chest, David’s arm is wrapped around his shoulders, bringing him a millimeter closer with each exhale, like he can breathe Patrick in entirely if they just lie here still enough. His right arm is bent, raking gently along Patrick’s scalp. His hair has gotten just a little longer, long enough to curl at the ends, and it’s become David’s favorite thing in the world to run his hands through it, to pull on the little waves until they stick out from Patrick’s head like they did in his grade four school picture. Patrick hums a little bit, and it’s not a hum, it’s a purr, because he’s lying in David’s arms and David is petting his head and it just feels  _ so good. _

Patrick’s fingers keep running their way around the rings on David’s fingers. David’s left hand is resting on his own chest, fingers spread wide, as Patrick can’t stop touching him. He trails soft, gentle fingertips along the outline of his hand, at times barely even sure they’re making contact. He switches directions and flexes his fingers, letting the pads of his fingers trail along each finger, bringing them all together on the back of David’s hand before stretching them out again. He’s synching the movement up with his breath, and in his almost-sleep he thinks it looks like a heart. His heart. Beating, on the back of David’s hand.

“Patrick,” David says, but Patrick isn’t listening. A meteor could hit the house and he’d probably stay laying right here, running his hands across the brushed gold of David’s new rings, tracing the way they bite lightly into David’s skin. He wraps his fingers around David’s to feel the warm stretch of skin where the cuff rings don’t meet. The bedside lamp is the only light in the room and it’s soft, glowing, casting shadows into the peaks and valleys of their shared life. It bounces off the rings at the edge, flickers of the gold and brings out shades of amber, sepia, copper. A million things that shouldn’t work together, and do, and are all the more beautiful because of it.

It’s different than it was with the silver rings, because obviously it is, but not for the reason Patrick would have originally assumed. The gold rings seem like David, like they belong there, the way the golden ribbons of flame on Patrick’s favorite Givenchy sweater belong there. The gold is warm, and receptive, and maybe from time to time a malleable, but only if you know what you’re doing with it. Silver reminds Patrick of snow, and cold, and locks. Gold is sunshine, and warmth, and keys. Patrick is the lock. David is the key. He’s tired, but that sounds right inside his brain. 

“Patrick,” David says again, and it sounds like he’s underwater, far away, so Patrick snuggles deeper into the hollow of his shoulder. David smells so good. He smells like the store, like every product they carry at the store, but also like cherry blossoms and the smallest, sharpest cut of the toner he uses every night. And, just like the rings, the way David smells makes sense too. Everything about David is a puzzle that’s a picture as soon as you put it together, but not before.

David’s chest is still moving underneath Patrick’s head but his hand has stopped moving, and it stops for long enough that Patrick doesn’t like it. He misses it. He misses every part of David as soon as it’s gone. He doesn’t want to move, his head feels heavy, like he’s fighting against more than gravity, but he has to know. He has to know why David stopped petting him even though he didn’t stop petting David.

When he tilts his chin back and looks at David from underneath his eyelashes, the look on David’s face stops his breath in his throat, stops his heart from beating, stops time itself. Patrick wants to build a monument to that look, to David’s face as he looks at Patrick. Patrick thinks for a second that might vain, but he doesn’t care, because he’s always loved beautiful things and the way David is looking at him is beautiful.

“How long have you been looking at me like that?” Patrick’s voice is rough and patchy with disuse and exhaustion.

“Forever,” David says, and Patrick can’t tell if he means since they started laying down, or since he stopped playing with his hair, or maybe he literally means forever. Maybe David has been looking at Patrick since they met, only Patrick’s never noticed before. Some part of that seems like it might be true, so Patrick keeps looking at David. His fingers keep tracing the rings and his eyes won’t leave David’s and he’s just watching his fiance watch him and it should feel uncomfortable, but it doesn’t.

“We need to sleep,” David says, his eyes still tracing lines along Patrick’s face. “We should sleep.”

“You’re right. We should.” 

“You first.”

“Okay, David.” Patrick closes his eyes and snuggles back into David’s chest, it’s broad planes and wiry black hair and a heart that beats for Patrick the same way Patrick’s beats for David. 

And, eventually, they sleep.

3

“Oh my God, David, yes,” Patrick’s hips buck beneath David’s wandering hands, soft, firm palms that press into the bones of his hips, fingertips that leave almost dime-sized bruises when they’re not careful.

David’s breath ghosts over the deep blue briefs Patrick is wearing before he lowers his mouth and sucks him gently through the fabric. Patrick hisses and lets his head fall back, gritting his teeth as David continues to mouth at him, his tongue pressing firmly against the damp spot where Patrick is leaking precome. He sucks gently, and the friction of fabric on his painfully hard erection makes stars burts behind his eyes. “David, can we— ”

And David knows what Patrick needs, knows before he even asks, and he slides the elastic of Patrick’s underwear down his thighs, Patrick lifting his ass off the trunk just enough to leave them bunched with his jeans just below his knees. It’s awkward, and they’re on top of a fucking mountain, but they’re engaged —  _ engaged  _ — and even with everything that has gone wrong this one thing has gone so supremely right, so Patrick lets his shoulders relax and tries to relax.

David is on his knees on the blanket Patrick bought, and although he packed it with pictures of champagne and selfies in mind, he certainly sn’t complaining that  _ this  _ is what followed the champagne. David’s pressing soft kisses to the tops of his thighs, to the tip of his still leaking cock, to the soft flesh just below his belly button where he’s surprisingly ticklish. He bites back a laugh that quickly turns into a moan. They’re alone in the clearing, but that doesn’t mean alone on the mountain, so Patrick breathes through his nose and tries to keep his vocalizations to a minimum.

Which isn’t easy when David’s swallowing him down like there’s a prize waiting for him at the bottom of Patrick’s cock. His nose is pressed against Patrick’s pubic bone and he’s not moving, not doing anything but breathing and holding Patrick’s cock in his throat, but it’s the hottest thing that’s happened to Patrick in a while. They’ve been so busy, between the store and the rehearsals and having to, you know, hide an entire proposal. And now they’re here and Patrick’s made the easiest decision of his life and David has four gold bands wrapped around his fingers.

Fingers Patrick suddenly, violently wants to see wrapped around his cock. He taps the top of David’s head twice and David pulls off with a loud, wet popping sound. His mouth is red and swollen and Patrick can’t help himself, he reaches out and runs his thumb along his fiance’s wrecked lower lip. David nips at his thumb, his right hand coming up to stroke Patrick slowly until his mouth could get back to work. Patrick sighs and thrusts into David’s fist once or twice. He says David name, low and breathy and broken, “David.”

“Mmm.”

“David, I need-” the words catch in his throat and David’s hand stops moving. Patrick knows from experience that now that he’s started the conversation, David won’t move again until Patrick tells him what he wants. It’s cruel, really, but it’s effective. Patrick licks his lips and can’t pull his eyes away from David’s left hand, where it rests on Patrick’s thigh. David follows his gaze and his eyes go wide in understanding. But even though he understands, he’s going to make Patrick say it.

“Tell me what you need, Patrick.”

“I need - I want — hand. Your left hand. Please. I want —” David leans forward and kisses the rest of the words out of Patrick’s mouth. 

His left hand wraps around Patrick’s cock as his right hand drops to Patrick’s thigh, and it shouldn’t make that big a difference. It shouldn’t feel different than it ever has before. But it does, and not only because David is using his non-dominant hand so every stroke, full along Patrick’s length, every swipe of his thumb across the head to gather precum and slick David’s other hand, feels different. And then there are the rings. The four thick bands of gold that are warmed from David’s skin, but still feel so foreign against the sensitive skin of Patrick’s cock. And he’s going so slow, it’s driving Patrick crazy, he has to know what he’s doing.

Patrick can’t pull his eyes away from the way David’s hand looks, the way those rings look, a solid line of gold at the base of David’s knuckles, as Patrick fucks into David’s fist. David’s eyes flit between Patrick’s face and his cock, and he’s biting down on his lip and almost  _ growling  _ at Patrick. Patrick wraps a hand around the back of David’s neck, pulling them towards one another until their foreheads are resting together and they’re both watching David jerk Patrick off. 

“I’m gonna-”

“Yeah, mmhmm,  _ yes _ ,” David’s voice is rough in Patrick’s ear and his grip tightens when his hand slides to Patrick’s base, does this little wrist flick at the tip that drives Patrick wild and then he’s coming, he’s biting into David’s shoulder and coming all over his hand, his rings, the blanket beneath them. It’s messy and sloppy and the exact opposite of how their handjobs usually end.

Which, really, is just the icing on the cake of Patrick’s new favorite day.

4

“Knock knock.”

“You do know you don’t have to say knock-knock when there’s no door, right?”

Patrick walks across their little bedroom nook and wraps his arms around David’s waist. He has to go on his toes to do that and be able to rest his chin on David’s shoulder, but when he does, David is able to plant a kiss to his temple. “Ah, I do know that, yes. Over a year with living with Ray means I am well versed in the many ways in which knock-knock is complete failure as a conflict.”

“Please do not bring Ray’s name into this bedroom space.”

“He sold us this bedroom space, David.”

“Oh my God! What did I just say?”

Patrick laughs and tugs at the bottom of his t-shirt. “Are you actually coming to bed?”

“I am, yes. I just,” David’s fingers are twirling a ring around the top knuckle of his ring finger. He’s wearing all four of his rings in what he thinks of as the Brace Way, with two rings on his index and ring fingers. “I normally take my rings off. When I sleep.”

Patrick’s face goes all soft, his mouth sliding into a little slash of a smile, and his eyes are large enough for David to drown in. He looks over David’s shoulder, or tries to, and presses a gentle kiss to the side of his neck. His voice is barely above a whisper when he speaks again. “So take them off, David, and let’s go to bed.”

“Yep. Yes. Absolutely,” But David just keeps spinning his rings, can’t quite bring himself to slide the metal off his fingers.

“You don’t  _ have  _ to, you know. You can sleep in them.”

David shakes his head violently. “Absolutely not. They’re cuffs? If they come off they are  _ impossible  _ to find again.” He says it like he knows, because he does, and he really has no desire to repeat that particular experience with these particular rings. “I’ll just take them off. It’s fine! Just, take them off.” But David just keeps spinning them.

He feels stupid. It is stupid. Patrick is standing and watching him and he’s just spinning his rings because he feels like if he takes them off, it’ll all go away. That the last week will disappear out from under him, that if he takes them off Patrick disappear and the mountain will crumble and the whole of Schitt’s Creek will just cease to exist, undoing the last two years and everything that’s come out of it. 

“Hey,” Patrick wiggles around until he’s standing in front of David, and his hand comes to rest on top of David’s, stilling the now almost frantic motion of his fingers. David’s hand stills, and he tries to match his breath to Patrick’s. “You know - the rings are just rings, right David? You could put your silver ones back on and we’d still be engaged.”

“Mmhmm.”

“You could put  _ no  _ rings on, and we’d still be engaged. I could burn those rings in a fire and it wouldn’t undo anything that’s happened.”

“Don’t you dare!” Patrick laughs, and it’s kind, and he’s not laughing  _ at  _ David, he’s never laughed  _ at  _ David unless David was laughing too and it’s one of the reasons he’s simply the best. “And yes. I know. I’m just.”

“The inside of a burnt marshmallow?”

David groans and lets his head fall onto Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick’s massaging David’s hands with his own, rubbing gentle circles on the back of his hands, pulling gently on David’s fingers until his knuckles pop. “I’m going to kill Ted for telling Alexis that story.”

“Aw, it’s sweet.”

“No, it’s ridiculous, and Alexis doesn’t need to know any more ridiculous stories about me.”

“Oh, I don’t know David. I think this ridiculous story had a pretty happy ending.” Patrick holds his hand up underneath David’s nose and opens his fist, where he’s got all four of David’s rings nestled in his palm. David beams down at him, and Patrick turns to set each one gently on the nightstand. When he turns back to David, David catches his mouth and kisses him in a way that says “thank you” and “I love you” and, finally, “let’s go to bed.”

They crawl underneath the crisp white sheet and David waits until Patrick is asleep to pick up the rings again, holding them stacked in his hands until the sun comes up. 

5

“David, what are you doing?”

David flits around the stockroom like a tornado. He’s tossing boxes onto the ground and digging through them like a madman, leaving product scattered all over the floor and he moves from one box to another, gets on his hands in knees — in his Neil Barrett jeans, no less — to run his hands underneath the shelving unit on the far wall. He’s mumbling to himself and clearly in a panic, but Patrick just leans up against the doorway and watches. David continues to fly around the room, and it, and it’s not until the third time he walks directly in front of Patrick that he sees him standing there. 

David freezes, plastering a giant fake smile on his face as both hands immediately disappear behind his back. Patrick just lifts his eyebrows and brightens his voice. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“Hi, babe.” 

“What’re you doing?”

“Nothing!” David’s voice is clipped and he’s looking over both shoulders like he’s hoping for backup. “Just, rearranging?”

He asks it like a question and his face is pained. Patrick shakes his head, his smile shifting until it’s something more rueful. “Uh-uh. Try again.”

David opens and shuts his mouth once, like he’s considering lying for the briefest second. But then he catches Patrick’s eye and huffs, doing a little foot stop hip check thing and holding his hands.

“I lost them!”

“Lost…” Patrick looks down at his fiance’s suspiciously bare hands and trails off. “David.” His voice is matter-of-fact, but David cuts him off before he can continue.

“The rings, my rings.I know, I know, and  _ you  _ know I never take them off! But this time I did and now they’re gone, I can’t find them  _ anywhere  _ and oh my God babe I am so, so sorry. I’m going to find them, I swear.” He’s spiraling and it’s taken all the normal snipe out of him.

“What happened?!”

“Remember that shipment of hand lotion we ordered to make up for the, uh, miscommunication about the motel products?” Patrick nods, slowly. It hadn’t been cheap, making up for the fact that David had accused a respected local vendor of basically poisoning his entire clientele. “Well we finally got to open the new shipment today, and…”

“And you decided to sample a product we already sell?”

“It’s a new scent! Apple cinnamon!”

“So you took off your rings and opened sellable product so you could smell like a pie?”

“Patrick!” David looks stricken, and Patrick feels every muscle in his body softening by half a degree. David never says his name, never says his name  _ like that,  _ and Patrick wants to reach out and wrap him up like the precious thing he is. But he also really, really loves making David squirm, and sometimes his better angels don’t win out.

“You know, I had all four of my grandparents’ rings melted down to make those.”

David’s face goes sheet-white and Patrick watches the long column of his throat as he swallows thickly. “You never told me that.” He looks like he’s on the verge of crying and suddenly Patrick feels terrible.

“Hey, hey, come here,” he crosses to David and wraps his arms around him, squeezing him tight against his chest. He’s got David’s arms pinned, his chin resting on David’s shoulder, and he can feel the shake of David’s chest as he breathes. “David, I’m kidding.”

There’s a deep, injured sniff and David’s voice is dangerously low. “That is  _ not  _ funny.” 

Patrick laughs, squeezing David tighter as he tries to pull away. “Well, if you didn’t think that was a laugh riot, you’re really not going to like this.”

His left hand slides down into his pocket and comes out fisted around David’s rings, all four of them, two of the deep C-shapes caught on one another so they look almost like an infinity sign. Patrick cradles them in his hand as he holds it up to David’s chest, unfurling his fingers slowly. David looks down at his hands at it’s a war on his face between deep, immediate relief, and sharp irritation at Patrick for letting him do... _ all  _ of that.

“You left them sitting next to the register and I grabbed them when we got busy; I didn’t want them getting lost.” He gives David a pointed little look.

David reaches to swipe them out of Patrick’s hand, but Patrick closes his fingers quickly and makes a ‘tsk-tsk’ with his tongue. He takes David’s hand other hand in his empty one and pulls him to the side of the stockroom, onto one of the boxes he’d ignominiously dug through. He makes David sit, but he keeps standing, a reverse of they way they’d been when Patrick had proposed. 

David is still looking at him with annoyed eyes, but Patrick just smiles even more fondly. He loves every version of David Rose, but slightly-annoyed-and-still-begrudgingly-affectionate is maybe his favorite version. He takes David’s left hand in his, slipping the first ring out of the little bundle in his fist and sliding it down around David’s index finger. It catches a bit, and Patick’s got to use the littlest bit of force to get it over the knuckle. “Let me— ” David reaches out to help but Patrick cuts him a look and he stops, wrapping his lips around his teeth and sliding the hand not currently in Patrick’s underneath his thigh. 

“David Rose, you are ridiculous.” It’s something that David’s been called before, but never with that same softness, not from a cute little mouth with loud eyes looking at David like he hangs the moon. “And I love you.” Patrick kisses the tip of his index finger before moving onto David’s middle finger.

“I love that you can’t help but put things on your body that sound like they should be edible, instead.” 

“Oh my god, it’s  _ body  _ milk can we please let that go?!”

“Never.” Patrick twists another gold ring down the length of David’s middle finger, and he shivers. They both do. 

“I love that you were ready to tear this entire store apart, leading to God only knows how much cleanup time and effort.” David gives a little shrug but doesn’t say anything to that one. Patrick gives him a little nod and plants another kiss, to his middle finger this time. 

“I love the way you always bring me tea extra hot from the café, sometimes when I don’t even ask for it, and that you only made Ted pay a third of the replacement cost of the sink he and your sister broke.”

“Not like Alexis was going to pay for it.”

Patrick laughs, a silent little thing that shakes his body and makes his eyes glow. “Fair enough, but hush. I’m almost done.”

David rolls his eyes. “ _ Hush _ , he says like his nana.”

“My nana loves you,” Patrick reminds David, but his look is stern and he’s got a stronger grip on David’s hand now, so David just nods and lets Patrick continue. He’s working the ring onto David’s ring finger and Patrick’s not sure if it’s because he’s been holding them in his hand or because this is, like, technically  _ the  _ finger, but something about sliding the gold cuff up against the thin webbing of David’s fingers puts a little catch in his throat. He stifles it as best he can, but he doesn’t miss the heat in David’s eyes when he speaks.

“I love that you carried me up a mountain, and back down again, and that you told Stevie before you told anybody else and that you —”

“Do you always speak in threes?” He’s teasing because Patrick’s getting too close to Real Emotions for a Tuesday in the store when they’ve got closing to do, but Patrick isn’t ready to let him off the hook quite so easily. 

“David, this is you we’re talking about — be lucky I’m not speaking in the hundreds.”

“Oh.” And David sighs a little, like he’s falling in love with Patrick all over again. Maybe he is. Patrick falls in love with him a dozen times a day. 

“Last one.” Patrick kisses the tip of David’s ring finger and moves on to his pinkie. This one slips on easily, always has, so it makes it easy for Patrick to say. “I love that you love me.”

“That’s it?”

Patrick tilts his head a little to the left and smiles. “Yeah, David. That’s it. That’s everything.” He places a kiss to the center of David’s palm and twists his wrist and then they’re holding hands, the press of Patrick’s flesh against David’s, molding around the golden bands that mean forever.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is.” David’s staring at their hands like it’s a work of art, and Patrick wants to spend the rest of his life in this moment. 

And he would, if it weren’t for the fact that their stockroom was a mess. The bell overhead rings, and they both stand. Patrick kisses David on the forehead and they both head to the sales floor — they’ve got their entire lives to clean up. 


End file.
